PreFab UI Browser 2.0

PreFab Software releases a major new version of UI Browser, the "ultimate assistant" for GUI Scripting

North Andover, MA -- December 22, 2006 -- PreFab Software, Inc. and Bill Cheeseman today announced the release of version 2.0 of their popular product, PreFab UI Browser. UI Browser is now a Universal Binary that runs natively both on Power PC Macintosh computers and the new Intel Mac Pro, Mac mini, iMac, MacBook Pro and MacBook.

UI Browser 2.0 contains many new features and improvements, including an enhanced Screen Reader that displays all of the actions, attributes and notifications supported by the UI element currently under the mouse in real time as you move the mouse around the screen over any application.

UI Browser 2.0 requires Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or newer, and it supports all of the new GUI Scripting and Accessibility enhancements introduced by Apple in Tiger.

UI Browser is the "ultimate assistant" for Apple's GUI Scripting and Accessibility technologies. It helps you to explore, manipulate and monitor the user interface of most Mac OS X applications running on your computer. With the push of a button, it also generates AppleScript statements to control even non-scriptable applications using GUI Scripting. No other utility provides all of the information you need in order to write scripts for GUI Scripting.

Download a free, full-featured 30-day trial version of UI Browser 2.0 now at http://prefabsoftware.com/uibrowser/. This trial version will work even if you tried an older version of UI Browser more than 30 days ago.

New customers may purchase UI Browser 2.0 for $55, with quantity discounts available. UI Browser 2.0 is a free upgrade for customers who purchased an earlier version during 2006. There is a $10 upgrade fee if you purchased UI Browser before January 1, 2006, to help us continue to support and enhance UI Browser. (Even a free upgrade requires you to obtain a new registration key. UI Browser 2.0 will work for 30 days as a full-featured trial version until you obtain your new key.)

Selected New features and Bug Fixes in UI Browser 2.0:

• UI Browser is now a Universal Binary that runs natively on Intel Macs.

• UI Browser now requires Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or newer.

• UI Browser now includes an enhanced Screen Reader that reports on the UI element currently under the mouse in real time as you move the mouse around the screen over any application. When you switch to the Screen Reader, it fades slowly into view and all other UI Browser windows fade away to get out of the way of other applications' UI elements. Click the Screen Reader's "Auto Motive mode" button to make it semi-transparent and cause it to move out of your way automatically when you move the mouse over a UI element behind the Screen Reader. Command-click the Find in Browser button to close the Screen Reader, and the other UI Browser windows reappear with the element under the mouse selected in the main browser window.

• UI Browser now includes Help buttons to open context sensitive Help pages about how to use particular windows, drawers and preference panels.

• UI Browser's description of every UI element now includes its AppleScript identifier and index in parentheses, as well as its Accessibility role description and title, if any.

• Double-clicking a UI element in UI Browser's main browser view now highlights that element on the screen, bringing the target application and the window containing the element to the front in order to give you an unimpeded view of the highlighted element.

• UI Browser's highlighting rectangle now snaps to the selected UI element's new position or size on the screen when the element is moved or resized, so that the element and the highlighting rectangle remain synchronized.

• UI Browser's main browser view now presents a Help tag showing the value of the UI element under the mouse in UI Browser's main browser view, if it has a value, after a brief pause.

• When UI Browser's AppleScript preferences are set to "Send script to script editor," scripts generated using the AppleScript menu are now sent to the target script editor using URL Protocol Messaging. The AppleScript URL Protocol is supported by Script Editor 2, Script Debugger 4 and Smile 2.65 and newer. Because of this change, UI Browser is now able to send generated scripts to Script Debugger 4.0 even though it is not yet scriptable.

• The tables in UI Browser's Actions, Attributes and Notifications drawers now support Command-clicking to keep UI Browser in the background, as other UI Browser user controls already do.

• A stepper control has been added adjacent to UI Browser's Drawer pop-up menu. Click or Command-click the up or down arrows in the stepper to cycle among the five drawer states in order: Closed, Actions, Attributes, Keystrokes and Notifications.

• UI Browser's Attributes drawer now enables users to set the date and time value of a standard date picker in a target application.

• UI Browser's Attributes drawer now enables users to set the values of array attributes that are modifiable.

• UI Browser's Attributes drawer now enforces the Accessibility API specification that an element's AXMain, AXFocused and AXFrontmost attributes can only be turned on, not off, even if they are marked as settable.

• A new preference has been added to the Notifications pane of UI Browser's Preferences window to allow you to register to observe any notification from any UI element. This new preference is intended for application developers testing their implementations of the Accessibility API and is normally turned off. It enables a developer to verify exactly what notifications are issued by a particular UI element.

• UI Browser's Page Setup dialog now includes a UI Browser menu item in the Settings pop-up menu. Choosing it opens a UI Browser accessory view where you can choose to print any combination of the element's path, actions, attributes and notifications when printing a report about the target application's selected UI element.

• Double-clicking a UI element in UI Browser's View Array and Set Array windows now selects that UI element in UI Browser's main browser view, as a shortcut for the Find in Browser button.

• The generated AppleScript script for "Click Selected Element by Position" now works correctly.

• The generated AppleScript reference to a known UI element having no corresponding property in the System Events dictionary is now assigned the correct index.

• The values of objects contained in an array attribute are now always displayed in the view and set array window, even if the objects are not UI element objects.

• New notifications added in the Notifications pane of the Preferences window are now listed in the Notifications drawer, and they can now be registered and observed in the Notification Log window. This feature is intended for application developers testing their implementations of the accessibility API. It allows UI Browser to observe notifications that are not part of the documented Accessibility API.

• UI Browser hot keys are now forwarded to the active application, in case the active application implements the hot key as a keyboard shortcut.

UI Browser 2.0 includes many other new features and bug fixes. Open Version History in UI Browser's Help menu for details.

PreFab Software, Inc. has unmatched experience controlling the GUI via scripts, releasing PreFab Player in 1994 with continued sales and support today for Mac OS 9 and earlier. In 2003, PreFab entered the world of Mac OS X with PreFab UI Browser, a popular utility to support Apple's new GUI Scripting technology. PreFab UI Actions, implementing "universal attachability" for AppleScript, followed in 2004. Download fully-functional 30-day trial versions at http://www.prefabsoftware.com/. UI Browser and UI Actions are based on Bill Cheeseman's Cocoa framework for working with Apple's Accessibility API.

This press release was originally issued by PreFab Software, Inc. For current information, visit PFiddlesoft.